Airship

From Girl Genius

Generically, a lighter-than-air vehicle for getting from place to place in the air, but in the world of Girl Genius, there's a lot more to an airship than that. Airships are the primary mode of aerial transportation, and so dominant that when Gil shows Agatha his "falling machine" (or, as he'd probably prefer to think of it, his flyer), it's the only heavier-than-air flying machine that we'll see for quite some time. In the world of Girl Genius, airships work.

The great-grandpappy of all airships is Castle Wulfenbach, shown here. Needless to say, most airships aren't nearly as big as this behemoth; in all likelihood, if someone tried to build a bigger one, old Klaus would instantly destroy it, and probably the builder as well. However, while Castle Wulfenbach is probably the largest airship out there, it's not the most modern one. An important plot point is that when Zola "Heterodyne" descends on Mechanicsburg to try to take control of Castle Heterodyne, she leaves a brand-new, modern airship overhead for insurance, and also as a viewing platform for some of the powers behind her. Some nice, if laid-back, intelligence gathering by Vanamonde von Mekkhan reveals that this shocking pink apparition is "a flash ship, a new type out of the Stockholm yards." We don't know yet how this new-fangled, if garish, design improves on older ones; stay tuned.

Airships serve not only as transports but also, of course, as weapons systems. In addition to the ones bearing guns for air-to-air combat (which is to say, most of them), Klaus maintains a fleet of "bomber" airships for little odd jobs such as carpet bombing rebels. He gets ... distracted ... before he gets to use them in this particular appearance, which is just as well.

In general, airships are Really Cool, and there is much more to be said about them.